Free The Cruel Stars of the Night by Kjell Eriksson Page A

gazes she understood they conveyed more than simply an interest in black-eyed Susans and butterfly weed. Her mother smiled back at everyone, including the men, and often exchanged a few words with those who walked by. It was as if she wanted to say: “Tell me something about the weather or the garden, not necessarily anything of substance, only a few words to show that we exist.”
    She found it easy to make contact with other people, looked those that she spoke to in the eyes and used only a few words but could still get people to converse and laugh. But this was only true in the Botanical Garden, it was like a preserve, a green oasis where her mother went in order to speak freely.
    Sometimes she lapsed into a kind of dialect that Laura thought sounded strange and that she later realized was the North Uppland dialect from her mother’s home region. It was particularly when she spoke with other women that the words came. “Jestanes,” she could cry out, “endes” and “vurte” left her beautiful mouth and together with her gestures they created an aura of intimacy around her and her conversational partner.
    Laura came to linger under a tree, the branches of which hung all the way to the ground. Someone had thrown a piece of paper on the ground and Laura picked up the dirty note. “Milk, horseradish, ricotta, soup-in-a-cup, chips” written in a handwriting that was barely legible,and at the very bottom a string of digits, perhaps a telephone number. The piece of paper, a list composed in haste, disturbed her. Not because it littered this area—it was insignificant and would soon crumble away—but the painful aspect was the quotidian message from a world where you bought horseradish and chips.
    Laura crumpled it up, but then folded it flat just as quickly with an impulse to dial the phone number. It was a sign, it hit her, perhaps a coded message for help.
    She stared at the note, had to steady herself against the tree trunk, and tried to imagine another person, one with soup-in-a-cup in front of her, sitting at the kitchen table. Or else she had, because surely it was a woman, lost this list before she went shopping and was standing in the grocery store right now trying to remember the items she needed to buy.
    Laura tossed the scrap of paper, pushed her way through the branches, and stepped out onto the gravel path. It was as if her legs no longer had the strength to carry her farther into the garden. She remained rooted to the spot, indecisive. An older man was strolling around the alpine section. He cast a quick glance in her direction and smiled.
    Laura hesitantly followed the path and after a couple of meters turned toward the scrubby remains of some tall perennials. Her feet sank into the lawn that was soggy after the rain of the past few days.
    She didn’t really find things as she remembered them. The organization of the flower sections had been changed. She had run around here as a girl, chasing butterflies, stood absolutely still behind bushes and spied on her mother.
    Now it was different. It was like visiting the neighborhood of your childhood where the buildings had been torn down and the streets repaved. Laura looked around. Everything had withered away except a few asters that were clinging to the remaining autumn warmth.
    She heard voices from the entrance of the tropical greenhouse. Several women in work clothes stood on the steps, smoking. One of them laughed. Laura turned away.
    “What am I doing here?” she asked herself. She looked at the asters. Maybe they had stood there twenty-five years ago. Laura couldn’t remember. Her mother would have known. At different times she took her daughter to the most colorful areas, told her about the flowers. Sometimes she used names other than those printed on the metal signs. “My names,” she explained, “the ones I learned when I was a little girl.”
    Laura knew that her grandmother had been known for her flower beds. They had never met. Her